


kaleidoscope

by spicyjarvis



Series: the ineffable idiots [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Aziraphale is so in love, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is so done, Demon Summoning, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gay Panic, Gen, Hugs are weird, Humour, I think?, I use capitals in the fic, In which the title has nothing to do with the fic itself, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Just not in the title or summary, Light-Hearted, M/M, Summoning, Summoning Circles, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, free him, let him go home, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 08:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19719973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyjarvis/pseuds/spicyjarvis
Summary: “when you said you wanted to summon a demon,” one of them - a boy with messy brunette hair and wide, frightened eyes behind a pair of round wire glasses - begins, “i didn’t think it would actually, you know, work.”“neither did i,” the girl beside him with the long hair and caramel skin murmurs.“this is going to be a headache,” crowley grumbles, kicking his toes weakly against the invisible barrier he’s trapped inside.





	kaleidoscope

**Author's Note:**

> it's not angst??? jarvis are you SICK??????

“It says here,” Evie begins, jabbing at her laptop’s screen, “that if you draw this symbol on the floor and say… whatever _that_ says, you’ll summon a demon.”

Alex peers at the screen over her shoulder. Nothing of what he sees is particularly impressive. The symbol looks vaguely cliche, the words are likely bullshit and he doesn’t doubt that the website providing this information is completely misinformative and fake.

But he glances down at Evie, notices those subtle hints of thrill and cat-like curiosity in those sparkling eyes and wonders how much of a problem it would be to go out of his way to at least try it with her. It’s not as if they have anything better to do with their day - and besides, there’s never been solid evidence that demons _actually_ exist. Nothing will happen. What could go wrong?

“Look at that one,” he says, pointing out the diagram labelled ‘The Devil’s Trap’, found just below the first one Evie had spotted. “It says that if you use that one, it will trap the demon, so it can’t leave or move from the circle unless you break it.”

“I didn’t think you were so interested.” Evie scrolls down to read.

“Oh, I’m not. I just have nothing better to do.”

The girl jumps out of her seat and throws open kitchen draws until she manages to dig out a blue drywipe marker. Alex watches her bemusedly from his perch on their dining table as she copies out the devil’s trap with wobbly precision on the floor. “Is that right?” she asks from the ground.

“You need to add those little lines in the triangles.”

“Oh.”

As she does so, Alex reads through the article open on the laptop again. “ _‘You should say the summoning words in your primary language, as the language you speak will summon a demon who also primarily speaks that language. For example, if you say it in English, you will summon a demon who primarily speaks English.’_ ” He cocks a brow. “How convenient.”

“Perfect.”

She clambers to her feet and washes her eyes over the drawing on the ground with a sort of pride that he’s never seen her experience so externally before. This may be absolute bullshit, but at least Evie is having a good time doing it.

“This better come off.” Alex hops off the table and studies the marker against the floor. “My mum is coming over next week. I don’t want her to think I’ve gotten involved with a cult or something.”

“As if she’d notice,” Evie counters. “She’s blind as a bat. Put those summoning words into Google Translate.”

.

Crowley slaps a book face-down onto a slightly obscured top shelf and is immediately met with a cloud of grey dust that tickles his throat and makes him sneeze. “This place needs a good deep cleaning,” he mutters as he tries to wipe it off his black button-up.

From somewhere on the other side of the shop, Aziraphale lets out a sigh. “I suppose it does. I haven’t ever thought about the build-up of dust in here. I never notice it. I wonder if the customers ever do…”

The demon doesn’t like to help people - it _is_ the opposite of his job, after all - but, lucky for him, Aziraphale is an angel and therefore is not a people. He miracles the dust away from the shop, watching as the shelves turn from a pallid grey to shiny cherry wood, and then cleans the rugs and the windows while he’s at it. “My treat,” he tells Aziraphale.

He hears Aziraphale’s tell-tale delighted gasp and prepares to be on the receiving end of his partner’s favourite human tradition - he calls it a hug, but Crowley thinks it’s just an occasionally acceptable invasion of personal space.

The shorter being’s arms wrap around Crowley’s chest and the demon feels a pleasant warmth wash over him. Not that he’d ever admit it out loud, but he really does enjoy these hugs sometimes, even if they radiate this angelic breed of pure, unbridled love and happiness. Those aren’t at all demon things, but he thinks he can allow himself this, just on infrequent occasions.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” Aziraphale sighs into his partner’s button-up. “That was awfully nice of you.”

There’s no response and the angel realises quickly that the warm, familiar body he’d been clinging to barely two seconds ago is gone, leaving him suddenly and strangely alone in their quaint little bookshop.

.

Crowley glances around at the chipped robin’s egg blue paint on the walls and the polished hardwood floors and quickly understands why he was unpleasantly thrown into the void and spat violently back out of it again.

Leave it to bored, inexperienced teenagers to successfully summon a demon. The two who stare at him with their jaws on the floor look barely old enough to own their own apartment and likely didn’t expect anything to actually happen when they scribbled a devil’s trap onto the floor in ugly blue marker and said a couple of stupid words they found on the internet.

“When you said you wanted to summon a demon,” one of them - a boy with messy brunette hair and wide, frightened eyes behind a pair of round wire glasses - begins, “I didn’t think it would actually, you know, _work.”_

“Neither did I,” the girl beside him with the long hair and caramel skin murmurs.

“This is going to be a headache,” Crowley grumbles, kicking his toes weakly against the invisible barrier he’s trapped inside.

The boy staggers backwards a couple of steps, his eyes never leaving Crowley. “You- you actually…”

Crowley already knows that this is going to take a while to get away from - there’s no way he can use any of his demonic abilities within the confines of a devil’s trap no matter how badly drawn it is - but at least he can _try_ to speed up the process with a little sweet talk. “Yes, hello, hi, nice to meet you. You ordered your demon and your package arrived, same-day delivery and all. Do you think you could open up the trap so I can get out? It’s cramped in here.”

“What if it- what if it hurts us?” the girl whispers.

The boy just shakes his head. His face is pallid.

The demon pretends not to notice that she uses the word ‘it’ to refer to him. “Oh, please, as if I care enough about you to touch you,” he grumbles honestly. “The moment you let me out, I’m going home, fellas. I have shit to do. Minor inconveniences to perform. You know how it is. Where are we on the whole ‘letting me out of here’ thing?”

“I- demons lie! I heard demons lie,” the girl says to her companion. And then, with a sudden burst of confidence, she says to Crowley, “we can’t let you out. Not until we know you’re telling the truth.”

“You force me to appear in your shitty living room while I’m going about my day and you have the nerve to tell me I’m not allowed to leave?”

There’s no response to that one.

“You two have some balls, I’ll give you that,” Crowley continues. “For all you know, I could be some super strong piece of shit demon who is barely held back by these traps. Those exist, you know.”

Their faces go an even sicker shade of grey and the demon internally grins. That is in no way true when you don’t count the man on the throne - demons have many weaknesses and unbroken devil traps happen to be one of them - but the humans don’t need to know that.

This may be an annoying situation but he’s at least aware that he’s not about to be exorcised or anything like that. These kids have no idea what they’re doing and they’re too terrified to get any closer to him. The boy looks as if he’s about to pass out, he’s so pale and shaken by the sight of Crowley. Clearly a - previous - sceptic.

The girl looks scared, sure, but Crowley can feel the excitement and thrill slowly building inside of her the longer she looks at him. He’d prefer to frighten them into letting him out but he’s somewhat impressed by their ability despite the fact that they’re clearly first-timers that he thinks charm may just be the best way to get what he wants.

“It- it won’t hurt us? If we let it out,” the boy murmurs to the girl.

“How the fuck am I meant to know, Alex? How?”

“Wh- don’t say my- my fucking name! What if it uses it to fucking- kill me, or something?”

“Shit, I don’t _fucking know,_ Alex! You think I thought- I didn’t think this would actually _work,_ or-”

“Oh, for Satan’s sake, will you two shut up?” Crowley snaps. He knows he shouldn’t scare them further but he thinks he’s allowed to be frustrated. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not right here. I’m not going to kill you, or touch you, or even look at you once you break this trap. I’m going to go home and fall asleep on the couch.”

The humans stare at him as if he spoke in some sort of alien language.

Crowley motions at the trap underneath him.

The girl’s mouth opens and closes like a suffocating fish. “I- I thought all demons…”

“... hurt and tortured humans? Caused nothing but chaos and destruction? Are all bright fucking red and had horns sticking out of our head?” Crowley finishes impatiently. “We’re all awful, I know, but that’s in our job description.”

A tense silence washes over the apartment. Colour gradually returns back to the humans’ faces, as if they’re finally understanding that Crowley didn’t willingly appear before them and therefore has no actual intention to cause them any harm.

All he wants is to go back to existing within that pleasant warmth and love that his angel’s arms grace him with. Maybe it’s just because he was removed from the bookshop right in the middle of one or perhaps he’s becoming softer than he realised. Hugs are space invading, nontraditional to him and sometimes rather sweaty depending on the time of year but that doesn’t mean that Crowley isn’t allowed to miss them just a little bit.

“I feel kind of bad,” the boy - Alex? - says finally.

“Yeah, I would hope so. Demons have an agenda too, you know.”

The girl takes a moment to observe Crowley for no more than a minute and then eventually finds it within herself to step forward and wipe away a small section of the devil’s trap with her sock.

“Thank you,” the demon tells them as earnestly as he can. 

They watch him like anxious hawks from behind the table as he steps out of the trap and stretches his arms above his head.

“Y-you won’t hurt us? Or haunt us? Or whatever,” the girl stutters out, slowly, carefully relaxing away from her companion.

Crowley considers it for all of three seconds and then ultimately decides that they don’t really deserve to be any more frightened than they are already. He may be a demon, but he isn’t about to be _cruel,_ especially towards humans who don’t seem to have any bad intentions. Curiosity isn’t always a bad thing, right?

“No,” he replies honestly. “Just, please, don’t go about summoning any more of us. Not everyone downstairs is as easy going as I can be.”

The girl nods. “Noted.”

“S-sorry,” Alex murmurs.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Crowley wonders what he could have done to them if it weren’t for the fact that he had his partner’s voice in the back of his head, reminding him that it’s cruel even for a demon to innocent human beings (it’s actually very in character for demons, but Crowley can’t deny that he has always been a _little_ soft compared to the rest of them).

“All good, guys,” he says. “Peace out.”

And, with that, he lets himself out of their front door.

  
  


.

  
  


“Stop it! Stop laughing!” Crowley demands.

Aziraphale tries his best, he really does, but the very idea that his partner was stuck in the middle of some random humans’ boredom-inspired daytime activities _is_ pretty funny, and trying not to show it out loud is very, very difficult.

“It’s not funny!”

He breathes out, “I’m sorry, but yes, dear, it is.”

When Crowley huffs and crosses his arms, he looks vaguely akin to a disgruntled toddler who’s just been denied ice cream for breakfast. The angel, managing to compose himself enough, moves to sit on the bed beside him and places a somewhat comforting hand on his knee. “I’m sorry, dear. I really am.”

Crowley stares at his feet. The smallest hint of a smile decorates his lips. “I guess it’s pretty funny,” he mumbles. “You should have seen their faces, Zira. All owl-like with fright and surprise.”

“You’re sure you didn’t hurt them, yes?”

“I’m sure, angel,” Crowley reassures him. He rubs at his eyebrows with the palm of his hands and then looks up at him, right in the eyes, through the black lenses of his sunglasses. “Satan, you really have made me soft, Zira.”

Aziraphale’s soul could have exploded with the sudden influx of adoration he feels for his silly little demon and he almost automatically throws his arms around him in what he thinks humans refer to as a bearhug.

His partner has always particularly valued his personal space and so when he melts into the contact and buries his face into the crook of his neck, he’s sure a little part of him swells with endless waterfalls of unbridled love for the being he long ago felt so very different from when they first met atop that wall in the middle of that never-ending, golden desert.

.

“Do you think that demon will ever come back to say hello?” Evie says one day, as she and her best friend lounge on the couch watching mindless daytime television together.

Alex shrugs. “If he does, he’s free to watch _Grand Design_ with us, I guess.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments would be rad ;)
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)   
>  [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


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